Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.